Who is the Southern League's Yasiel Puig for the 2014 season? Third baseman Kris Bryant of the Tennessee Smokies and pitcher Robert Stephenson of the Pensacola Blue Wahoos are considered the top candidates.

The Southern League opens its 51st season with five games on Thursday night.

Puig started the 2013 season in the outfield of the Chattanooga Lookouts. The web site of minor league baseball, milb.com, considered him the No. 2 prospect in the Southern League last season. Forty games in, he had 39 RBIs and a .599 slugging percentage, earning a call-up to the Lookouts' Major League parent club, the Los Angeles Dodgers. He finished second in the voting for National League Rookie of the Year and 15th in the NL MVP race playing 104 games.

The Southern League's top-rated prospect last season was Jacksonville Suns outfielder Christian Yelich. He jumped all the way to the Majors, too, in 2013, hitting .288 in 62 games with the Miami Marlins.

This season, milb.com rates Bryant as the Southern League's top prospect. He stands No. 9 on the web site's list of the top 100 prospects in the game.

The second player selected in the 2013 draft, Bryant came out of the University of San Diego swinging - once his contract was settled. The Chicago Cubs farmhand played just 36 games last year, and they were spread over the Rookie, Low-A and High-A classifications. He batted .336 with nine homers, 32 RBIs and a .688 slugging percentage, then went to the Arizona Fall League and won the loop's MVP award.

Opening Day rosters for the Southern League's 10 teams hold six players on the milb.com top 100, and three of them are on the Smokies - Bryant at No. 9, pitcher C.J. Edwards at No. 42 and outfielder Jorge Soler at No. 49 - demonstrating the lush depth of the Cubs' farm system.

Major League Baseball's web site, MLB.com, rates Bryant as the No. 2, Edwards as the No. 4 and Soler as the No. 5 prospect in the Cubs' system.

Stephenson ranks No. 19 on the top 100. Stephenson is a right-handed starter entering his third pro season after being selected in the first round by the Cincinnati Reds from Alhambra High School in California in 2011. Last season, he had a 7-7 record with a 2.99 earned-run average in 22 starts spread over Single-A, High-A and Double-AA teams. In 114.1 innings, he struck out 136 and walked 35. He made four starts for Pensacola in 2013, going 0-2 with a 4.86 ERA and 13 walks in 16.2 innings.

The two other top-100 players in the league are on the Jacksonville Suns - pitcher Andrew Heaney at No. 29 and pitcher Justin Nicolino at No. 81.

The Suns have eight players who are rated by MLB.com among the top-20 prospects in their parent club's system -- more than any other Southern League team has. Five of the players are starting pitchers - No. 1 Heaney, No. 4 Nicolino, No. 6 Anthony DeSciafani, No. 8 Jose Urena and No. 16 Angel Sanchez - giving the Suns an entire rotation of Miami's leading pitching prospects.

The Jackson Generals are on the other end of the top-20 list, with only two players among the Seattle Mariners' top-20 prospects.

Heaney and Stephenson are the Southern League players considered by MLB.com as the No. 1 prospects in their organizations.

The players for each Southern League team ranked among the organization's top-20 prospects by MLB.com include: